In Memoriam

by Alice Winn

Morphine made the vast sweep of history more logical to him than the chaotic present, which had not yet shaped itself into meaning. In his mind, he saw empires rise and fall like the swelling and abating of the tide, perpetual, each society blindly throwing its tragedies and flaws onto foreign shores. It seemed inevitable, and yet, from the perspective of the sanded beaches, devastatingly corrosive.

He had become used to the idea that he would die. There wasn’t anything else to think. He only wished he wouldn’t have to see any more of his friends killed before it happened.

He didn’t care about the poems, one way or another. He merely cut away the blackened, gangrenous bits of his soul and sold them.